For Murdoch, umm’s the word

It was a nervous
Lachlan Murdoch
who stepped up to the plate and hosted a teleconference for journalists and analysts for network Ten’s half-year results yesterday.

Wags were quick to jump onto Twitter and point out the number of “umms" and “ahhs" which littered his presentation.

That was perhaps a bit unfair considering Murdoch still has the “interim" tag attached to his role as chief executive and has only been in the job for about six weeks – as he pointed out many times.

We think he will probably be happy if the court action between rival Network Seven and his designated successor,
James Warburton
, goes the latter’s way, otherwise Murdoch could be in the hot seat for while – which means a whole lot more chats with pesky journalists and analysts hanging on his every, umm, word.

Murdoch and his sidekicks, chief programming officer
David Mott
and chief financial officer
Paul Anderson
, were at pains to stress throughout the hook-up that Ten had to recapture its youthful audience. As Murdoch put it, Ten had to get back to being “the bold, confident, slightly irreverent brand that it’s always been".

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That led to a question about veteran newscaster
George Negus
, who has just had his show shifted half-an-hour later to 6.30pm on Ten’s main channel. Murdoch was asked how, given Ten wants to attract younger viewers, it would cope with having “an old bloke like George" in the middle of 90 minutes of news every night. Murdoch quickly passed the question on to Mott, who said there was still plenty of “upside" in the ratings for Negus and the news programs Ten is going with.

After that it was soon time for the marathon session to end. We bet Murdoch isn’t looking forward to the next one.